Paris, Where There's Fog
by OverlyDramatic
Summary: AU; While escaping a party on his book tour, Dan Humphrey finds himself drawn to an enigmatic woman escaping a party of her own.


Another fic from Dan's perspective, because I still haven't mustered the courage to tackle Blair's. She's so lovably complex, and it's far less daunting to view her through someone else's eyes (although technically this is limited omniscient POV). I love Dan dearly, but I feel it's easier to write his motivations because 1) they're closer to my own, and thus simpler to understand, and 2) he's just a less complex personality. Which is not at all a bad thing. But yes.

Anyway, I would love to turn this into a serial, but unfortunately I just don't have the time. As evidenced by the fact that I've been working on this one shot for about two months now. But I hope y'all enjoy it nonetheless. It's unbeta'd, because I still haven't found someone to help me with my revisions. I did revise it endlessly myself, but self-revisions really never end, so I'm posting it unsatisfied. Ah well. If anyone wants to volunteer for a beta position, PM me. I'd love you forever. (And you'll hate me as soon as you realize how finicky my muse is).

In the meantime, enjoy my little Parisian Dair AU.

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters involved or other characters mentioned. But I do love to manipulate them to my own situations.**

Dan slips through the ornate, double-level doors, escaping the clouds of perfume and pretense that are weighing heavy on him. He's usually adept at navigating these waters—five years is quite a time to practice—but tonight is different. Tonight he's more than an extra invite, an addendum. Every other night he'd been an accessory of the heart, allowable because of the shine he brought to someone else's countenance. Tonight every smile shines in his direction, hoping to catch his shed glitter.

His editor will find him soon. If she doesn't, she'll call his stepmother, and his phone will ring ceaselessly until he heaves a sigh and rejoins the party.

For now, he is free. So he sits in the shadows under the sweeping colonnade, mind gathering and rejecting the scattered bits of phrase it can't help but create when at rest.

There is an utter freshness to Paris after a rainfall. He lounges between endlessly winding streets, and still he can feel the crispness of the air, the hollow lacquer of a city whose occupants have scrambled into narrow buildings to avoid the heavy sky.

The wetness around him is a different heaviness than the adulations he escaped. Warmer; welcoming. It makes him feel as though he's painting a dream. The world expands endlessly before him, every opportunity leads to something grandly understated: a night in a bar; traipsing about the city on foot; climbing the Eiffel Tower in a downpour.

Dan breathes deeply, feels the soupy fog curl in his lungs. Lets his eyes trail along the hazy line of marble terraces and midnight sky.

For a few short moments, he is alone in the world.

Then a black cab makes tracks through murky puddles and stops abruptly in front of a stately building across the street. Dan barely has a moment to speculate before a figure glides through the stately double doors. The driver honks once; idles on the street. The woman lingers on the periphery of the sweeping circle of light proffered by the still open doorway.

He sees her, and she doesn't see him. That is what captivates him.

He is a writer. An avid people watcher: far removed when he can be, in the crowd but not of it when he can't help otherwise. It's the part of him that's stayed constant. Struggling in Brooklyn or immersed in the turbulent UES, language is his coping mechanism. He writes to puzzle out how best to live.

He watches her, mind luring details into its net, until soon he has a healthy supply of poetry floating inside his head.

She is made of darkness and light, illumination and recess. Cream skin and coffee hair—he can tell that much, even under the moonlight. The classic elegance of her long dress contrasts jarringly with the single-minded diligence with which she manipulates her tablet computer. Nothing moves but her fingers, but the practiced swoop of their movement tells him she is capable, energetic, determined.

Dan watches as she folds the cover closed, blinks up at the night sky. She is backlit, a pencil sketch, and he wishes he could make out her face.

The woman looks up, hand tilting upward to catch moisture that has slowed to a mist. With a sigh she steps back to lean against the marble balustrade penning in the porch. Another moment's pause, and she is sinking onto the marble slab that serves as a bench. Her tablet is back in her hands, and she is clearly settling in.

Dan is on his feet before he realizes, skirting inside the door to grab an umbrella he might normally balk at stealing and jogging across the nearly empty street. He has not bothered to unsnap the binding, let alone open the thing, and by the time he reaches the stairs a fine mist has nestled into his curls. He climbs the stone stairs before he can help himself, feeling foolish as he reaches the top.

He shifts awkwardly from on his feet, the soles of his Oxfords squeaking with every nervous tick. He drums the umbrella against his pant leg, and realizes with a pained grimace how entirely he acted on impulse.

She hasn't glanced up, and for a moment he considers going inside, joining what sounds like another pretentious party to escape the assumption that he's run across the street to offer a stolen umbrella to a woman who still, _still_ refuses to notice him.

But he catches sight of her face, lit by the harsh blue-cast of her hand-held, and his intrigue overwhelms his self-admonishment. Her hair is upswept and romantic; her expression businesslike; but neither description captures the sweet curve of her cheek, the disinterested turn of her lips, the fathomless secrets that seem buried in her gaze.

Dan stops, swallows, feels odd and out of place. It isn't like him to approach strangers, and on nothing but the hastily formed notion she somehow needed saving. He glances down at the umbrella, back up to her hand sweeping along her handheld, and considers how little she seems affected by the apparent delay of the rain.

He is just mustering the nerve to quip, "I think your meter's running," when she acknowledges him.

"You know your Dior is last season."

He blinks in surprise, but her eyes remain fixed on her screen. Every few seconds, her finger tweaks something only she can see and the shadows shift across her features.

"Sorry, what?"

He isn't sure he heard her; his mind was fixed on breaking through her casual indifference.

Finally she looks at him—not just a flicker of the eyes, but her whole head tilting up to meet his stare.

"Your Dior," she repeats, gesturing at the rain-dappled suit. "It's last season."

"Oh," he blinks again, and looks down at the offending garment. His shoes are speckled with mud, too. He wonders if she's noticed, and decides she has. "Yes. It is."

"It's none of my concern," she shrugs, returning to her iPad, "but I wouldn't go in there looking like that."

As she speaks, her head tilts to the cracked door, the sounds of privileged people crowded together, then back to his damp suit. Her eyes remain fixed on her screen, but in the illumination he catches the slightest scrunch of her nose as she gestures to his attire.

He has to admit, he's a little offended, if not particularly surprised. But it's an old offense; one he's learned to brush aside.

"I wasn't-" he starts. He's still a little flustered and the excuse escapes him, so he tries again, "I just escaped my own party, actually."

He tilts his direction as well, and she's forced to lift her eyes to catch his meaning. She studies the marble columns, the tasteful décor, the simple book posters, unreadable from this distance.

"Literary groupie?" she presumes, a hint of distain coiling in her throat.

"Author, actually," Dan admits, rubbing absently at the curls tickling his neck. He doesn't know why he feels abashed, as if his career is a subject to avoid. Back home, those posters fill him with a sense of pride, accomplishment; defiance, even.

_Of course_, he begrudges, _back home everyone knows I'm only successful because of who I know_.

He knows it's why he's felt off-kilter, why he escaped into the reality of the night air. In New York he begrudged those who refused to let him fail. Here, without them, he feels like an imposter.

But the girl in front of him raises an eyebrow and Dan forces himself to find the manners Lily pressed into him over the years.

"Dan. Dan Humphrey."

He stretches out a hand, wonders if she'll mention the ink stain across his knuckles. His editor called it "a clever bit of costuming." Dan had been happy the pen hadn't exploded while he was still chewing it.

Her eyes nearly memorize each crevice of his palm before she accepts it with her own.

"Blair Cornelia Waldorf," she pronounces, as if anyone listening should recognize the name. As if anyone who recognizes it might find their eyes shining with delight.

He thinks he does. Recognize it, that is. Thinks, but can't be sure.

He makes to ask her about it, but she stands and slides her tablet onto the bench, offering him her full attention.

Idly, she shakes out her dress, flicks it into the air with measured precision and allows it to settle gracefully around her hips. The question leaves him.

"So, Dan Humphrey. What brings you to my side of la rue?"

He slips his hands into his pockets, fiddling with the seam as he tries to think of a plausible excuse. He finds himself admitting the truth.

"I needed an interlude, and you looked trapped by the rain."

Intrigue lights her expression, and Dan feels inexplicably drawn to the meld of poise and pleasure in her large brown eyes.

"And you were trapped by adoring fans?" she muses, eyes rolling.

She resettles herself on the stone bench, off-center to the left. He expects her to pull her legs up beside her as his stepsister might have done, but she remains erect, ankles tucked gracefully beneath the sweep of her gown.

"Rich people are much scarier in hordes," he teases.

Alone in the shadows, she doesn't seem so scary at all. Or perhaps he's mistaken; she's twice as terrifying as when she was merely an outline, an ephemeral siren pulling him closer. But only half as nerve-wracking as when he first drew close, watching the delicate twist of her features emerge from the shadows.

She casts him a look. A single look that says, _I know your game_ and _I'm willing to play_ and _Make it interesting. I dare you_.

Aloud, she returns, "Says the man wearing last season's Dior."

"Exactly. Last season."

She smiles, and he counts it a victory.

"And what is an elegant damsel doing out on a night like this?"

"Just waiting for my toad," she retorts drily, and this time it is Dan who laughs.

"I always saw myself as more of a faithful hound," he muses. She shakes her head, and his mirth settles.

"Seriously, though," he says, taking a chance and settling next to her on the bench. "You don't look like the kind of girl who sits alone outside a party."

She wrinkles her nose, and he tries not to grin at how cutely the expression juxtaposes with her eveningwear.

"I'm _interning_."

"Interning?"

He has to admit, it is the last thing he expects to come out of her mouth. Admiring the city; refreshing her lungs after suffering the inescapable cloud of nicotine; fleeing a lover hell-bent on rekindling their torrid affair, or one who's shattered her heart ten too many times. Each of these scenarios and a dozen more have crossed his mind, but "Parisian pedant" was not one of them.

The iPad should have tipped him off, he supposes. But one can hardly blame him for failing curiosity when he has a seemingly endless supply of mystery staring him down, wrapped in dark blue silk.

"Apparently," she goes on, and he realizes he's about to hear a well-rehearsed speech, "fourteen years of assisting my mother's fashion production, five years of not only attending, but also walking the red carpet of Paris Fashion Week, and another three studying English and French Literature _in addition to_ Fashion Production and Design," she pauses to heave a dramatic sigh before continuing levelly, "do not make one equipped to work at _Vogue Paris_."

Dan suddenly wonders what he's gotten himself into. Not only is this girl a tightly-wound ball of elitist affront and effortless repartees, she seems to view fashion with the same single-mindedness as his sister. And stepsister. And stepmother.

Dan feels completely out of his depth. No surprise there. It's always been his default setting when haute couture enters a conversation.

Mentally, he berates himself. It's just like him to embroil himself in a situation like this over a pretty girl glimpsed from afar. Usually, this is about when the romance of his writer's brain wears off and he finds himself unable to connect, emotionally or intellectually.

Oddly enough, he still finds himself the tiniest bit entranced. She is intriguing, if nothing else, and her rant has an air of knowledge, not prattle.

Her eyes flick toward his, expectation brimming beneath the low, hot irritation. Dan feels a thrill run through him.

Okay, so he's more than slightly entranced.

"So you feel overqualified?" he hazards.

"Infinitely," she responds.

Dan sighs in relief at the single-word answer.

Blair sighs as well, a huff of displeasure that seems more habit that anything else. When she continues, her words are free of their previous fervor.

"I ingratiated myself with Carine when I was thirteen years old. But loyalties are non-transferable and, apparently, certain requirements non-negotiable." Off his look she clarifies, "Emmanuelle took some convincing."

He decides not to mention that the names mean nothing to him. He has context clues, after all, and he imagines she'd only sniff at him.

"Well," he begins, fumbling for a moment before settling on a shrug and a trite phrase, "C'e-"

"If you say, 'C'est la vie' to me, it'll be the last I hear of you."

Dan's jaw latches tightly to prevent the words escaping.

She laughs suddenly, as if she heard his jaw freeze and the pleasure of him heeding erased her censure of his blunder.

He's absolutely, utterly entranced by her.

Dan shrugs again, but he feels as if he's regained his metaphorical footing.

"Five years of listening with half an ear whenever we breezed through Europe couldn't undermine a lifetime of film noir," he explains with a grin.

"I should imagine not," she allows, eyes curious. "I only wonder at nobody calling you on it sooner."

"To be fair, it's a phrase I save for pretty women I meet by happenstance. And no one in my stepfamily fits the bill."

She rolls her eyes at the line, as he expects her to. Honestly, he would have been disappointed if she had smiled.

"So, thirteen," he muses, picking up the previous thread of conversation. "You've been chasing feathers and fabric for-" he eyes her up and down, makes a show of guessing, "ten years, now?"

She harrumphs, just as Lily would.

"Daniel," she admonishes, and her resemblance to UES matriarchs becomes comical, "a _gentleman_ never asks a lady her age. And she _never_ deigns to answer those cretins uncultured enough to do so."

"Ten years," Dan affirms with a grin.

"_Nine_," she corrects.

"Hey, me too," Dan tilts his head, mildly surprised. Off her look, he elaborates, "I mean, I'm twenty-two. Clearly, I haven't spent nine years in Paris."

"Ten," she says so airily he has to roll his eyes.

Oddly, the affectation doesn't make him wary. As snobby as his peers can be, Dan is always the one appraised with an upturned nose and branded with the dreaded word: '_pretentious_.' He sometimes wonders if a single soul in Manhattan knows the _word_ 'cretin,' let alone how to use it in a sentence. Somehow, he thinks Blair Cornelia Waldorf can spout the exact moment it made its way to the English dictionary from the French.

And Dan realizes, for the first time, how odd it is to stumble on someone in Paris who speaks flawless English. Not only that, but recognizes he doesn't speak French without once hearing him fumble, "Je ne parle pas francais."

"But you're American."

"Brilliantly deduced."

He waits expectantly. After a moment, she acquiesces.

"My father left my mother when I was eleven. She was always traveling to Paris, and Daddy and Roman bought a chalet in the country. It was only natural that I ended up here pour _college_ et _lycee_."

"And what sibylline trick told you _I_ was American?" Dan wants to know.

"_No one_ raised within a breath of the Champs-Elysees would let that mop grow a centimeter past two inches ago," she begins, staring pointedly at the mass of damp curls weighing down his forehead. "The stitching on your cuff was clearly done stateside," she adds, "_and-_" here she pauses, takes in the eyebrows inching into his hair, and grins impishly, "Your book posters are in English."

Dan glances over his shoulder. Now that the mist and fog have begun to clear, he can faintly see the print declare: _Inside__._ The French translation has been rather poorly superimposed over the title in thick, black letters.

"Right." He shrugs, turns to face her. Feels compelled to explain, "I don't even know why they published it, to be honest. I wrote it forever ago. It's about-"

"I've read it," she dismisses, leaving Dan astonished. Until that moment, he believed no one had read his novel who hadn't received a personal letter of supplication from Lilian van der Woodsen-Humphrey.

"Please, be honest," Dan recovers, gesturing her to appraise it.

She laughs, an unexpected sound of true mirth.

"It reminded me of a friend of mine," she admits. "An old friend."

She glances across the street, and Dan isn't sure if she is seeing the book party or another party entirely.

"The prose was plebian and the theatrics absurd, but-" somehow, the word is enough to take the sting out of her critique, "I could practically see her dancing across the pages."

Dan feels unexpectedly full at her words.

"She hated it," he admits. Off her look, expounds, "My stepsister. She's always thought I see her as one-dimensional, and the book didn't help."

"Sabrina certainly _seemed_ a one-off," Blair concurred, shrugging. "But if anyone bothers to excavate the subtext, she's quite nuanced."

"Nuanced?" Dan repeats, unconvinced.

"Alright, she's The It Girl," she agrees. "But while you may have skirted her perspective, your portrayal of her salvaged the book. I loved her and hated her in equal parts, without ever adequately understanding her motivations." Blair pauses a moment, then looks up at him. "I _suppose_ it takes talent to craft a novel around such a erratic, otherworldly character and not end up with teenage drivel."

"I had a crush on her, back before we met," Dan's hand moves toward his hair, but he catches himself and drops his fingers. They begin to drum idly on the cool, slick stone of the bench. "Before we knew our parents had—were still-" Blair arches a brow and Dan laughs awkwardly. "Yeah, family brunches were _not_ my idea of a good time that first year."

"That is so . . ." she sighs, and her words are part sardonic, part wistful, "deliciously twisted."

"Uh, sure," Dan rolls his eyes, "If you're in a Virginia Andrews novel."

Blair's eyes laugh at him, and she takes the story from him.

"So your lover-turned-stepsister—"

"Hey, hey," Dan interrupts. "I _never_ said we were lovers. We were not. Absolutely, definitely, not." He pauses, makes a face. "_Thank God_."

Blair waits for him to quiet and continues, "—imagines you can't move past your adolescent fantasies. She thinks you see her as pretty, flighty, privileged. You care for her," Blair deciphers, and Dan shrugs, still feeling awkward, "but not particularly deeply."

"I mean, I _do_," Dan says, though he doesn't know why. There are no Lilys or Rufuses to hear. "She's sweet and carefree and, you know, genuine. Usually. But-"

"No need to enumerate," she cuts him off with a gesture, and Dan is grateful for the uncomfortable look on her face. Serena and he have always had a strange relationship, and thinking of it unsettles him.

Dan pauses to look over at her—moonlight catching curls, creating a double frame around her face—and suddenly wants nothing more than to drop the conversation.

"She needed a balance. The dark to her light. The inevitable play of complexity versus simplicity," Blair says.

Dan agrees, though he doesn't say so.

That becomes the final word on the subject.

They sit for a moment, both staring out at the thick fog that had faded from Dan's awareness. The rain has stopped, and he wonders why she's still here. If he's that entertaining. If she's as inexplicably drawn to their odd little tête-à-tête as he is, awkward tangents and all.

The town car is still idling on the street, it's driver seemingly unconcerned with his mistress's delay. In the back of his mind, Dan pictures the fog roiling up around it, swallowing it and coming back for the rest of the street. He imagines the world has melted away and it is just Dan and this woman he doesn't know, motionless in a strange tableau.

"I take it you're from the city?" Blair asks, breaking the stillness. From the way her eyes scan the smoky night, she's thousands of miles away.

"How did you guess that one?" Dan wonders.

She's quite perceptive, this Blair Waldorf. She could probably make a career of it, though fashion clearly owns her in more ways than one. Dan idly wonders if she's ever been approached by the CIA.

Now he's picturing her with leather and a handgun. He clears his throat and does his best to look innocent. Spy novels are not his genre, and neither is soft-core.

Blair blinks away whatever clouds her vision. She twists to face him, head tilting derisively, "No one could capture the essence of that world with anything as pedestrian as _research_."

"New York, born and bred," Dan affirms. He pauses, eyes her sardonically, "Research is _pedestrian_? Really?"

She makes a distracted noise, waving him off. She takes a measured sweep of his appearance, all the more rumpled for their time in the night air. Narrows her eyes and demands, "Clearly Upper. West or East?"

Dan snorts.

He's spent enough time among old money that the question seems a matter of course, but he still finds such inquiries laughable.

"East," he replies, voice caught between snark and sigh.

Blair nods decidedly, relaxes a touch.

"I thought so."

"Clearly, so are you," Dan points out.

The look Blair gives Dan is far more surprised than the observation warrants. She watches his eyes, and he suddenly feels that she is trying to gauge the space between them: time and place and thoughts, similarities and dissimilarities. Kindred lives.

"I suppose," she says finally. "I'll always think of New York as mine, but in Paris I'm . . . content." Her mouth twists wryly, "The American in Paris is the best American."

The corners of Dan's mouth tweak upward, and he shrugs as he replies, "It's more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country."

Blair smiles softly, and leaves the quote at that.

"I never imagined living in Paris."

Her voice is as soft as her expression. Dan finds himself listening twice as raptly, as though the words will evaporate unless he takes care to acknowledge each shift in cadence.

"Even a month before it was decided, my life was laid out for me. I'd be a businesswoman. I was going to Yale. I was enrolled at Constance for the Fall, before . . ." she trails off, and it's like she's no longer present. She's lost in memory, an effigy of emotion repressed by years of careful crafting.

"Constance, really?" Dan asks, more to distract her than anything. It's strange how he barely knows her, but the melancholy in her face burdens him. "I went to St. Jude's all four years."

She glances up in clear surprise, and a bright smile pulls her lips wide.

"It's a small world, indeed."

He almost mentions he was enrolled at Yale before _Inside_ took off. Almost, and decides against it. Their lives, though entirely dissimilar, are strangely twined. He wonders if he might have met her there, if their lives and progressed differently. He pictures her in a dorm room; lounging on the quad. Smiles to himself, and decides he prefers her here, as she is.

"And now here you are, caught in the rain outside a fabulous party," his tone turns wry on the word 'fabulous,' "accosted by a handsome stranger from the life you left behind."

Blair crosses her arms, looking rueful.

"Didn't life turn out simply splendid?" she deadpans.

"Without a doubt," Dan answers with mock sincerity.

Blair's mouth twists, not quite a smile. Her eyes flicker to her fingers, and he watches her watch painted nails slip along delicate fabric.

She glances back up at him so suddenly, he's caught staring. He meets her gaze with all earnestness. Nothing changes in her expression, but her cheeks turn faintly pink in the moonlight.

"So I know your life story, and apparently you know mine as well. Wherever shall we go from here?"

The comment is an ever-so-slightly flirtatious demand.

Dan takes the plunge.

"Dinner is a logical step."

"At nearly eleven? Even in Paris, that's two hours late."

Dan calls her on her bluff, "And I know for a fact you didn't eat before slipping into that dress. I have sisters."

"And what makes you think I don't have plans?"

"Would you have spent forty-five minutes with a stranger in the rain if you had someone waiting on you?"

The question is rhetorical.

"I like to make people wait," she counters anyway.

Dan chuckles, stands, offers his hand.

"I don't doubt it."

She slips her fingers along his and he gently tugs her up. Her hand is soft, cool from the air, and she doesn't let go when she gains her footing. He relishes the feel of her palm warming against his.

"So, Blair Waldorf. What does Paris have to offer?"

"It astounds and appalls me that someone from the Upper East Side could be so willfully ignorant."

"I'm a transplant." Dan rarely has to explain this anymore. He hopes she reacts more positively than the kids from St. Jude's used to. "I grew up in Brooklyn, actually."

"Brooklyn?"

It sounds like a dirty word, but when she looks at him, the distain doesn't transfer. Dan mentally exhales.

"Then how did you end up—Oh!" she bursts, and her fingers tighten reflexively in his hand as color flushes her cheeks. "You're Daniel Humphrey."

Dan furrows a brow at her.

"I know we've only just met," he intones drily, "but I'm pretty sure I should be offended that you've forgotten me this quickly."

He can't help but glance at her wide eyes and be curious.

"No, I mean," her cheeks are still stained, and there is something of dawning horror in her voice, "you're 'Brooklyn loft' Dan. Serena and Lily's Dan. 'Plaid shirts at family brunch' Dan."

Her voice is faint, catching in the wind, and suddenly all Dan can see is a fresh-faced girl with doe eyes and a reportedly vicious tongue staring out of a worn frame in Serena's bedroom.

"You're Nate's Blair?" he can't help but ask, incredulous. "Summers at CeCe's Blair?"

She gains control of herself before he does, dropping his hand and swishing her dress in agitation before reaching over and smacking him in the shoulder.

"Ow," Dan mutters, more from surprise than anything. "What was that for?"

She is not answering when she speaks, but continuing on the subject she already decided upon. Suddenly, Dan has no problem believing every story he's heard of her.

"And you have the _nerve_ to call that book a novel!" she huffs.

"It _is_ a novel," Dan insists, rolling his uninjured shoulder for effect.

Blair levels an unimpressed look, and Dan backpedals.

"Granted, it was _inspired_ by real life events. And people. And places. But authors have sought inspiration from their daily lives since-"

"The addition of one or two fictitious elements does not make a memoir a novel," Blair breaks into his oft-used rationale with determination. "And from what I remember of Serena at age twelve, you probably didn't add even _that_ many."

She winces a little, as if suddenly realizing the capricious stepsister they've spent the night discussing is her childhood best friend, and Dan is quick to follow suit.

An hour ago, Dan felt as if he'd been swept into a black and white film, complete with a mysterious, wit-flinging heroine. But what seemed to be an unlikely tête-à-tête with a beautiful stranger now seems fraught with social history and familial implications. Such happenstance would have seemed oddly believable amongst the careful machinations of the UES, but here in Paris, where everything is unencumbered by illusion and expectation, it seems like a plot straight out of a grocery store novella.

"Technically, it's more of a satire," he admits. "But I couldn't exactly call it non-fiction without being driven out of the penthouse."

"The penthouse," Blair repeats, her voice inexplicably wistful for someone so horrified only a moment before. "How's little Erik?"

Dan blinks.

"Off at Sarah Lawrence."

She hums faintly, and Dan is left trying to keep up. He is completely at a loss with this strange and fascinating woman who makes him feel concurrently at ease and on the edge of a precipice.

"You're close?" she asks.

The question is innocent, her voice free of ulterior motives, but he feels as though his next words will decide the course of the evening.

He thinks of Erik, sitting in his dorm room and dispensing wisdom to friends and family who seem forever lost in the insane drama of the universe. He is sure Erik would have a strong reaction to news of Dan's current predicament. Knowing Erik, any advice given would be equal parts amused and incisive.

Dan shakes his head, entertained at the thought.

"Yes."

The word is simple, honest.

The edges of Blair's berry-stained lips curl up for the briefest moment before settling into an unreadable expression.

Dan pushes thoughts of Erik and New York and the entirety of their newly discovered connections from his mind, focusing instead on the lovely, intelligent, outspoken girl backlit by hazy streetlights.

He sees their path laid before him like the flicker of an old film reel: brunch along the river, Colette in the park, an endless parade of eveningwear occasions he doesn't fake a smile for.

Wordlessly, he proffers a hand. Wonders if she can see the possibilities in his palm as he can, or if it's all just inkblots and the invisible tethers of history.

She stares past his fingers, and Dan wonders if the scenarios spinning before her align with his, or end in disillusion. His eyes follow her mouth as her teeth pull her bottom lip under; release it in a second, lipstick smudged. His heart catches, leaps up, drums painfully.

And then Blair is releasing a shaky sigh, drawing her lips into a stout smirk, and brushing past his hand to tuck her body into the damp warmth of his side. A few seconds late he crooks his elbow, and she lets her hand fall from his coat to his arm with a bemused smile.

"You'll never get a second date with manners like that," she warns as she pulls him down the stairs and towards her idling town car.

"On the contrary," he says, just to argue. "All the women of my acquaintance are incapable of letting you go once you prove how desperate you are for their guidance."

The din of her party is receding, now; his still rumbles a faint suggestion of noise.

"We'll see," is all she says.

Her hand tangles briefly in the fabric of his coat, then drops away. For once, Dan's mind doesn't chase the plot to its end, alighting on all possible outcomes, choosing the one that suits him best. Instead, he traces the details of the moment—the warmth of her, the decision in her movements, the edge of uncertainty—and he leaves it at that.

"We will indeed," he murmurs, his free hand curling around the small, soft fingers on his arm.

Behind them, the two worlds flicker and fade to black.

**Dbdbdbdb**

Please take the time to comment. I may or may not respond, but I cherish feedback like nobody's business. And it always makes me more inclined to write, so it may inch another DB oneshot along. (Yes, that is unabashed bribery).


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